Charles Koch Quotes

I don't believe in a plumb line. I believe in the exchange of ideas.

Both my parents were a tremendous influence on me. My father's influence came from - he decided well, probably before we were born that as he put it, 'I'm not going to have any kids who are country club bums.'

I always wanted to be different and do things differently. I was a pain in the neck. I was challenging everything you wanted me to do and challenging people in school.

I don't have all the answers. I have a lot of questions. And I have some basic principles.

If people don't learn to work by the time they're in their 30s, they're never very productive.

A market system is not a profit system, it's a profit-and-loss system.

To make a quick buck, but over time, if you're not creating value for others, customers, society, isn't going to let you be around.

We are on dangerous terrain when government picks winners and losers in the economy by subsidizing favored products and industries.

I studied what principles under-laid peace and prosperity and concluded the only way to achieve societal well-being was through a system of economic freedom.

I didn't think I was good at anything, didn't do well in school. And then in the third grade, I was going to a public school. And the teacher was putting math problems on the board. And I said to myself - it's amazing how you can remember certain incidents at any age that made an impression - I asked myself why is she putting those up when the answers are obvious. And then I saw it wasn't obvious to anybody else in the class. So I said, "Hey, I'm good at something."

In America, we are just moving the chairs around and spending huge amounts of money rather than having them go in making people's lives better.

The role of business is to provide products and services that make peoples lives better - while using fewer resources - and to act lawfully and with integrity.

I have been a libertarian in my past but now I consider myself a classical liberal.

Years later, when I asked my father, I said 'Pop, why were you so much harder on me than my younger brothers?' he said, son, you plum wore me out.

In America, I think we just keep adding, and that's our problem. We almost never subtract. We keep adding these boondoggles, and these violations of the basic principles of equal rights - certain people have more rights than others - it's like "Animal Farm." The pig says that we all have equal rights, but some have more rights than others.

I'd like to see a rebirth of America - go back where there's equal rights for everybody and that people succeed to the extent that they help other people improve their lives. To lead toward a society that maximizes peace, civility, and well-being for everyone.

If what you preach and what you do are inconsistent, your children will spot hypocrisy faster than anybody and do the opposite.

The role of business is to provide products and services that make people's live better - while using fewer resources - and to act lawfully and with integrity. Businesses that do this through voluntary exchanges not only benefit through increased profits, they bring better and more competitively priced goods and services to market. This creates a win-win situation customers and companies alike.

If you have methods without principles, you're going to have trouble. But if you develop methods based on principles, then you can make progress.

Far too many businesses have been all too eager to lobby for maintaining and increasing subsidies and mandates paid by taxpayers and consumers. This growing partnership between business and government is a destructive force, undermining not just our economy and our political system, but the very foundations of culture.

If the legislation helps people improve their lives, then that's great because that's the ultimate goal of all of this.

I believe my business and non-profit investments are much more beneficial to societal well-being than sending more money to Washington.

My parents worked really hard at communicating other values they felt were important, such as integrity, courage, humility, treating others with dignity and respect, and having a thirst for knowledge.

I want my legacy to be greater freedom, greater prosperity and a better way of life for my family, our employees and all Americans. And I wish the same for every nation on earth.

Do you want to have your feelings hurt a little bit because you have some negative feedback, or do you want to continue down the disastrous track you're on and have a huge disaster? Talk about a bruised ego. It may ruin your career.

If you've got a dirty job, the best way is to help each other and then you'll create this culture of mutual benefit. And then you've got to understand who your customer is and create value for them and so on.

You can't start taking away benefits if people don't have any opportunities.

There are now businesses and entire industries that exist solely as a result of federal patronage. Profiting from government instead of earning profits in the economy, such businesses can continue to succeed even if they are squandering resources and making products that people wouldn't ordinarily buy.

The only way you improve is to try new things.

Embrace change. Envision what could be, challenge the status quo, and drive creative destruction.

Anytime students shout down a speaker who says something different, this is not good.

I've always believed in the saying that "there is no limit to what you can accomplish if you don't care who gets the credit."

You can pay certain people more money and stuff but that's just going to be a transfer from one group to another. The only way people's wages are going to rise overall, or average median income is going to rise, is if you increase productivity.

Just Donald Trump's tenor and insulting of people is just beyond the pale.

First word [of my father] when I arrived [as a CEO] is, 'Son, i hope your first deal is a loser, otherwise, you'll think you're a lot smarter than you are.' But he had tremendous values, tremendous integrity, humility, work ethic and terrific thirst for knowledge.

I've devoted most of my life to understanding the principles that enable people to improve their lives. It's those principles, the principles of free society, that have shaped my life, my family, our company, and America.

Being captive to quarterly earnings isn't consistent with long-term value creation. This pressure and the short term focus of equity markets make it difficult for a public company to invest for long-term success, and tend to force company leaders to sacrifice long-term results to protect current earnings.

Why I've never been that fond of politics and only got into it recently kicking and screaming, because I don't think politicians are going to reverse the trajectory of this country. I think it's going to depend on the American people understanding what is fair and what makes their lives better.

Just spreading the money around - that isn't what makes people better off; it's having more and better goods and services.

All the corporate welfare, yeah, it goes from cash payments to debt, to regulations on the competitors, to restrictions on trade, to mandates. You name it, anything so that business doesn't have to do a better job of creating value for others - they can just get the system in their favor.

The Declaration of Independence was only partially applied for women and for certain immigrants such as the Chinese. And it wasn't applied to get rid of corporate welfare and cronyism. People who had special connections got special deals from the beginning. So all of those violations of what the Declaration of Independence expressed, have led to the problems we have today. So, the sins of the fathers are visited upon the sons for seven generations, or much longer. Forever.

The easy way to make money is to get special political privilege. From the beginning of time, business has cozied up to government and gotten restrictions on competition and subsidies and stuff.

Success is one of the worst enemies of success, because success tends to breed complacency and lack of humility.

So to the best we can, what we do is focus on creating value for others, and how do we do that? We do it by trying to produce products and services that our customers will value more than their alternatives, and not just their alternatives today, but what the alternatives will be in the future. We try to more efficiently use resources than our competitors, and constantly improve in that, and we try to do the best job we can in creating a safe environment, and environmental excellence, and constantly improve at that.

Innovation comes from recombining existing technology and different perspectives in innovative ways.

The reason we tend to support Republicans is they're taking us toward the cliff at only 70 miles per hour miles an hour and the Democrats are taking us 100 miles an hour.

If somebody is doing more and more to make other people's lives better, have them make all they can, if that's what drives them, because that's what we want.

A classical liberal is someone who wants a society that maximizes peace, civility, tolerance, and well-being for everyone. One that opens opportunities for everyone to advance themselves.